Mission Creepy: U.S. Puts Boots On The Ground Russia Is Bombing

Russia's decision to bomb
pretty much everyone opposed to Syria's Assad regime -- including the
guys the US was training and funding -- startled the West last month. But
at least we didn't have any personnel there at the time, right?

(Guardian) - Barack Obama has ordered up to 50 special operations troops
to Syria, US officials announced on Friday, in an apparent breach of a promise
not to put US "boots on the ground", to fight Islamic State militants in
the country.

The Pentagon has also been "consulting" with the Iraqi prime minister, Haider
al-Abadi, to establish a special operations taskforce to fight Isis "leaders
and networks" across the Syrian border in Iraq, a senior administration official
told the Guardian on Friday.

But the White House insisted that its overall strategy to combat Isis remained
the same and said the special forces troops would be helping coordinate local
ground forces in the north of the country and other non-specified "coalition
efforts" to counter Isis rather than engaging in major ground operations.

"The decision the president has made is to further intensify our support
for our forces who have made progress against Isis," the White House spokesman,
Josh Earnest, said at a news conference.

The move came as diplomats worked in Vienna to restart talks on a political
transition that would remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. At the discussions
with leaders from Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the US secretary of state,
John Kerry, framed the troop announcement as part of a shifting policy that
included this major diplomatic push to initiate talks that would bring about
a political transition in Syria.

"We are intensifying our counter-Daesh campaign and we are intensifying
our diplomatic efforts to end the conflict," Kerry said, using the Arabic
acronym for Isis. "That is why President Obama made an announcement about
stepping up the fight against Daesh."

The injection of US special forces in Syria seemed at odds with earlier
statements Obama has made about not placing troops in the country.

Barack Obama in 2013: 'I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria.'

"I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria,"Obama said in an
address in September 2013.

Asked about that "boots on the ground" statement, Earnest said the quote
was taken "out of context".

"The quote that you pulled there is a very different situation," Earnest
told a reporter. "He [Obama] said he was not prepared to put boots on the
ground to take out the Assad regime. That was precisely the mistake the previous
administration had made ... to take down Saddam Hussein."

The US military has conducted narrow ground missions inside Syria, such
as one in May in which special forces killed an Islamic State commander in
a raid the Pentagon said took place in the east of the country.

A $500m effort over the last two years by the United States to train Arab
opposition forces in Syria failed. General Lloyd Austin, commander of US
Central Command, told the Senate last month that it had resulted in only
a handful of fighters actively battling the jihadi army. "We're talking four
or five," Austin said.

This has an eerily familiar feel. A few "advisors" go in, and don't seem to
accomplish much as the situation deteriorates. Then a few become a few hundred,
and advice becomes training becomes mission design and leadership. And we're
off to the races.

But this time around Russia might easily accelerate the mission creep by bombing
our "advisors" since they probably won't know exactly where our guys are at
any given time and all the rebels look alike.

John Rubino edits DollarCollapse.com and has authored or co-authored five
books, including The Money Bubble: What To Do Before It Pops, Clean
Money: Picking Winners in the Green Tech Boom, The Collapse of the Dollar
and How to Profit From It, and How to Profit from the Coming Real Estate
Bust. After earning a Finance MBA from New York University, he spent the
1980s on Wall Street, as a currency trader, equity analyst and junk bond analyst.
During the 1990s he was a featured columnist with TheStreet.com and a frequent
contributor to Individual Investor, Online Investor, and Consumers Digest,
among many other publications. He now writes for CFA Magazine.